Needles and Opium

Saw this this afternoon. It's the best and most brilliant Lepage work I have seen, and for me, it's a masterpiece.

Spoilers follow. . .

The plot, as such, has three creative men riven by the loss of their loves: Jean Cocteau and Miles Davis, in 1949, and Lepage himself some 40 years later. Lepage is played by Marc Labreche, who also plays Cocteau, while Davis is played by Wellesley Robertson III.

All three men occupy different hotel rooms (a transient space typical of Lepage, who often favours ephemeral places, such as airports or Las Vegas) in different places and at different times, though the hotel rooms, and other spaces they occupy, are all represented by a remarkable rotating sliced cube, which morphs and transforms, as it's occupants constantly change.

But, as always with Lepage, it is not the plot or the people that matter, but the transitions between the plot points, the moments where the different people merge into one, and the vast emptiness that lies inside their apparent individuality.

Never has Lepage dissolved individuals and stories and spaces so well as he does here. He even touches tangientially and topically on the identity politics of Brexit, whereby our Global, European, British and English identities are in flux and in conflict, when Robert reflects on the absurdity of the Quebec-Canada referendum, and the confusion of identity that occurred there.

As Lepage's mysterious and majestic Cube spins, and Lepage's own form emerges out of apparent stardust in the shape of actor, Marc Labreche, and his character and concerns so fluently and poetically meld with the lives and desires of others, Lepage somehow manages to map the tapestry of all our existences into one exquisite and revelatory artistic work. Profound!

5 stars

Next Saturday as in today (bit late to the game here)?  Me too! If you see me, say hello - I'll be in the stalls row P, probably wearing some kind of blue jumper (or just a light blue shirt, if it stays this hot), black trousers, and brown bag (heaven knows what Parsley would make of my fashion sense), brown hair, probably will also be bumming about by the box office/free water before/after the show. If you're busy then obviously that's fine, but if you've got a sec be lovely to put another face to another name on here!